In Square Enix’s latest epic RPG, the moral monstrosity of slavery is effectively reduced to window dressing
Thing is, and I haven’t played it either, but I know this from conversations I’ve seen about it, your character is a slave. Or, rather, is from the caste of people that is enslaved because they have magic. That means it’s something that can’t just be background, because it quite literally influences how everyone in the world interacts with Clive.
There was a really good Jimquisition on how being a “bearer” is treated in the world, and how SE just kind of overdid it with a lack of subtlety (jump to about the 4 minute mark to start, because there’s a lot of faff at the beginning before the video starts talking about the game). https://youtu.be/sgjqXTvHaLk?si=9EQqqsA4x2HEOmqc
Your character is not a slave. (Spoilers limited to promotional materials) Player character is the oldest son of the ruler of one of the major countries in the game world, so a prince. Ability to wield (very specific) magic is quickly explained that some of the nobles of that family can do. He somewhat is a slave at some point, but this is a very brief story moment (tbf at the very beginning, you meet your character as a slave before he goes into childhood memory where he is a prince). When relevant, NPCs do interact with character as with slave, but its rarely relevant. So it is very much a background theme, even if a major one.
That’s why the phrasing was “from the caste of people” in the clarification. It was just a cultural difference: his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don’t.
When he is briefly enslaved, it wasn’t because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to, it’s because he was that kind of person and simply hadn’t been treated that way before.
his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don’t
Not the point of the story, when NPCs get to know who the character is theirs opinion changes
it wasn’t because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to
That is actually almost what happened. If he was not a mage, that story point would change little.
The “mages are slaves” thing is more akin to FF6’s “there is no magic in this world”, like it is a somewhat big deal that Terra is mage, but game doesn’t spend much time there since it is not a point.
Yeah, I did see Steph Stirling’s video and I do get the arguments, but personally I don’t agree that just because it’s an element in the world building and the backstory of the main character it has to be a driving element of the plot.
Look at it like X-Men, being feared and hunted by humanity is sort of X-Men lore, but it isn’t the driving force of every story. Sometimes they’re just off having adventures in space or whatever.
See, this is why I wish this game wasn’t currently PS5 exclusive and had come out on PC like they originally planned. I can’t say what story it seems like they wanted to tell just because unless I want to watch someone else play it, I can’t know. I couldn’t even read much of the article because I didn’t want to get too far into spoiler territory. It’s very frustrating because this seems like an interesting discussion to be had.
Then maybe we who haven’t played the game shouldn’t be having opinions on some aspects of it, because context matters and we lack context on the whole plot.
